All your base are belong to us:

lingreference.org

Joseph V. Casillas

April 29 2014

Overview

Problem

How do you say VOT in Spanish?


  • Technical fields with specialized terminology need translations

  • Many fields don’t have satisfactory translations into many langauges

  • Most academics aren’t translators

Proposal


  • We can learn from anime

  • Fansubs represent a subculture that has dealt with similar problems

  • The fansub model can be used for technical translations

Purpose

  • Translate linguistic terminology in Romance languages

  • Provide community forum for consulting/suggesting/discussing translation

  • Made by end-user for end-user (i.e. linguists)

Current practices

  • Reverse wikipedia + google search

  • Find articles/books

  • Ask a prof/advisor/lab buddy

  • Wing it

Problems with current practices

  • Wikipedia only has entries in russian

  • No pertinant articles/books in TL

  • Prof/advisor/lab buddy doesn’t know/care

  • (linguistic) God complex

    • reliance on specific translation because it’s what somebody else said first (Chomsky, Bosque, etc.)

    • doesn’t take into account that it might not be a good translation

What we need


  • Forum where end-users (linguists) discuss, propose and rate translations of linguistic terminology


Possible consequences:


  • Creates a database that formed by linguists that can be accessed by linguists (students, profs)

  • Eliminates God complex?

Fansubs

What are they?

  • Subtitles in anime cartoons

  • made by the fanbase for the fanbase (doesn’t understand Japanese)

Why?

Problems

Other genres

  • The concept of fansubbing has extended to other cultures and genres
    • HIMYM
    • Lost
  • Fansubbers are FAST!

TS issues

Equivalence

  • Websites dedicated to reviewing and rating ‘quality’ of fansubs

  • Certain groups regarded as ‘better’, ‘worse’, more/less equivalent

What gets translated?

  • Honorifics

    • san

    • sama

    • kun

(in)visibility of the translator

  • Some fansub groups are known for providing relevant information that may be unknown to the viewer

  • Sometimes the information is not too relevant

So what?

  • community-based translations can help avoid problems involved with translation of techinical terminology

lingreference.org

The interface

KISS

  • Minimalist design

  • Intuitive

  • Accesible from mobile devices

Database

How it works

  • User submissions

  • Staging

  • Revision

  • Inclusion

Searching

  • Query sent to database through PHP

  • Database searched for ‘x’ term

  • Result sent back to webpage through PHP

Submission process

  • Required info collected for each submission

    • SL entry
    • TL entry
    • meaning
    • example usage
    • references
    • tags

Roadmap

Functionality

  • Rating system
    • ‘thumbs up’/‘thumbs down’
    • Display % ‘thumbs up’ with each entry
    • Rating occurs in entry, but accessible from forum
  • Include multiple possibilities/translations for each entry (if suggested by users)
    • Ex.
      • English: ‘voice-onset time’
      • Spanish: ‘tiempo de inicio de sonoridad’/‘tiempo de inicio de fonación’
    • Entries listed vertically, in order of highest rating
  • Entry count in ‘about’ section

Functionality

  • Google form to submit entries (same excel as staging)
    • Submissions come from:
      • forum
      • search results (if it’s not there, they can add it)
  • Definitions
    • Include English definition with each entry

Goals

Short term

  • Functional dictionary with limited entries

  • Build forum

  • Promote to linguists

    • facebook

    • twitter

Long term

  • Become principle reference for linguistic terminology in Romance

  • Grow user base

  • Serve as model for language revitalization projects

  • open source code (github)

References

  • lots
  • and lots

NOTES - the community establishes authority (Kiraly 2003)